Nokia + Intel : What It Means To The Mobile Industry

Even though ARM still has the upper hand, by a wide margin, when it comes to this performance/power consumption ratio, Intel may be catching up sooner than expected.

The original Atom 230 had a TDP of 4w but the Z500 has a TDP of only 0.65w; this is where its partnership with Nokia comes into play. The Finnish manufacturer may provide Intel with precious resources and the adequate environment to test and produce even more efficient processors.

The other reason why Intel and Nokia came together could stem from the fact that both are working on similar software platforms, Maemo on one side and Moblin on the other. Pooling together their software resources could help create an ecosystem capable of rivalling Microsoft one day.

The press release has several paragraphs pointing in that direction and will be one more visible crack in the 30-year old Wintel alliance. More significantly, the document mentions open source 11 times, showing if needed how important the concept will be to the two partners.

Intel spent $5.7 billion on research and development in 2008 and since it is currently superior to its archrival, AMD, on the desktop front which means that they will be able to allocate much more financial and human resources to retooling their mobile offers. 

The announcement of this collaboration came in the same month that saw Intel purchase embedded specialist Windriver for $884 million.